Civic: Enabling the future of privacy & digital security with ChainAuth™

When we introduced Civic last year, we were very careful to not overplay our hand. We wanted to start by building trust and creating an Identity Protection Network where consumers could signup for free identity theft protection services and, in the process, allow us to verify and authenticate who they are. This strategy has helped us build and create systems for ID Verification that will be the underpinning of a much larger vision that we have been working on in the background — creating Digital Identities for everyone.

I’m proud to announce that after over 18 months of development, Civic’s Digital Identity wallet is now available on the Apple App Store (Android coming later this month)!

So, what’s so special about Civic and how does it work? We’ve been developing a new type of authentication service, called ChainAuth™, which uses the Bitcoin Blockchain to validate your identity credentials — your personal information is never stored on the blockchain, but we utilize the cryptographic infrastructure to ensure that the data on your device is never changed or compromised.

Basically, Civic validates your personal information and identity, stores it on your mobile phone and only you can see or use that information. It is never stored on our servers! This means that if Civic was to ever get hacked, your information would never be released because we just don’t have it.

Now that your information is secured on your device (and backed up to whatever backup provider you use for your phone), you can use this information to do any of the following:

1. Open new accounts with banks & other institutions, or just websites & apps.
2. Passwordless-entry into websites and apps & built-in 2-factor authentication
3. Private signups to sites and apps (they can let you signup without taking ANY personal information)
4. Store your cryptographic keys and any other personal information, like health records, etc
5. Generate digital ID’s and passports (eventually, once governments start accepting Civic)

Websites and apps that accept this information from Civic can be assured that you are a real person, and that any information transferred is fully verified — which reduces fake accounts, fraud and even trolls.

There is a good reason why banks, government and other secure sites do not accept social logins — the information is not secure or verified. Today, with Civic, that changes.

Websites and apps can also request that you verify additional information that they need, on demand. The best part is that once you have done it once for one service, you can re-use it with other services.

Civic is launched yesterday in US for verified accounts (verified name, address & social security number) and also worldwide, but only for basic accounts (verified email & phone number) at first. We will be adding additional countries for verified accounts later this year, but this was a good start and gives everyone in the world the opportunity to use Civic.

For Civic, privacy and security is paramount, and we have ensured that the architecture of the system is such that you are always in control of all your personal information and can choose whom to share it with at all times. Eventually, we have plans to take this to an even greater level, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Thanks to our launch partners, TokenMarket & BnkToTheFuture — download Civic today and test it out by signing up for their services.

If you are a developer and want to integrate with Civic, head over to our developer docs here and get started. We will be doing a token sale (more info to follow tomorrow).

For those of you who are technically inclined, here is the comparison architecture of ChainAuth vs OAuth.

This is just the beginning…